Musings

It looks like daylight, but it’s a 3-second night shot, on a clear evening with a bright, bright moon. The magic of photography….

Posted at 9:17 PM | Comments Off on Full moon

Omicron is the dominant strain of COVID now in the US. This is what highly transmissible statistics look like.

And my sense of science indicates more variants are coming…not just variants, but variants we civilians will be talking about.

Yikes.

Posted at 7:30 PM | Comments Off on Oh, my

Apologies for the posting delay. I had to update my phone. Then ten minutes after the most-of-an-hour that that took, my watch alerted to needing its own update. And now, almost overwhelmingly, I can’t tell any difference from The Old Ways.

Posted at 8:54 PM | Comments Off on Updated world-let

Just before the hot season arrived, we got new HVAC units for upstairs and down. It was time.

I always think we shouldn’t let the autumn leaves accumulate on them…but they do. And they somehow slip through the grating much more frequently than I think they should be able to. I do pick off the ones that stop atop the grating, and then look at those wily ones and…well, worry a bit.

Posted at 8:54 PM | Comments Off on All shiny; almost

My that’s some gorgeous moonlight!

And I do believe I see clues to how my phone-cam does its low-light magic…given the the green dot-cluster to the left, and the red highlighting on the foreground plants.

Still, what a fabulous moon!

Posted at 8:46 PM | Comments Off on Lookee eastward

Seems to me that if there’s a sidewalk solar panel for buried infrastructure, we should be able to use sidewalk solar for other uses, no? Plenty of sidewalks other there, ya’know.

Found this little cherry tomato science project…kinda late in the season, but they should ripen…. After all, where’s there no frost, tomatoes are perennials. [Going and going….]

Posted at 8:39 PM | Comments Off on Sidewalk news

To the right of the pair of poles and below the horizontal lines, there’s a double loop of wire, with a large tubular Element. There’s another Element above, attached to the horizontals. I don’t know what those Elements are called or what they do, but they must be important, as they are scattered about. Always above ground…. Nothing to do with the No Parking sign, however, I am certain. 😉

Posted at 9:32 PM | Comments Off on Mild confusion

Last night we became temporary keepers of a fern forest and assorted house plants. Fingers crossed that they thrive for the next two weeks and the rodents don’t…dig them up.

Today I continued my week of accidentally triggering my phone to act one way or another on my behalf. Got an arty shot of it!

Posted at 5:47 PM | Comments Off on Life’s details

Today I walked around the old economic heart of A Real City.

The Beating Heart was these falls, the Upper Saint Anthony Falls, now marred? by a lock and dam.

The power the river generated, and this is the Mississippi so it is a mighty generator, ran the Gold Medal Flour mill on the south/west side…

And the Pillsbury mill on the north/east side. This is the underbelly of the mill complex. [Note fisher-person.] Now the mills are no longer milling, and this sacred place of the people who were here before the EuroAmericans arrived is irretrievably altered.

I quite enjoyed walking across the curving Stone Arch Bridge that seems to connect the two mills. It’s a pedestrian bridge now, although it was built for rail cars. The water on the left is the lower end of the Pillsbury millrace (it seemed to me), and the bridge crosses the main channel of the Mississippi.

And all this? Yup. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Posted at 10:28 PM | Comments Off on Layers of history

A UP friend (who now lives in Florida, far from snow banks and running-board slush stalagtites) suggested I might enjoy a free app called “iNaturalist, LLC” that identifies plants. And boy howdy is it fast, even with a crappy picture with lots of shadows. I’m so loving it.

Even though I know this as Queen Anne’s Lace, the app notes that it’s Daucus species, probably Daucus carota, also known as wild carrot. Look how much I’m learning. Watch out, AT&T, I’m going to be burning through my data!

Also, I’m sorry I didn’t capture what looked to me like a hornet buzzing these flowers…it’d be another species for me to identify (somehow)!

Posted at 8:09 PM | Comments Off on Reduced guessing